Civil War Survivors Sought in Mountain View Cemetery Tour

Frank Krone has a passion for historic cemeteries, which - he admits - not everyone shares. “First off, when I tell people I’m a historian, their eyes glaze over.” That’s because most historians accumulate dry facts. “They fixate on the who, what and when of things, “ Krone observes. But Frank and his equally impassioned wife, K.C. Piccard-Krone, chase the “why” - the unknown human story behind the events of Oregon’s past - and they usually find it.

THE PROGRAM
K.C. and Frank will co-present in an indoor-outdoor program on Friday July 19th, at 5 p.m. , ’“Civil War Veterans of Clackamas County.”’ The program will begin with a discussion at the Museum of the Oregon Territory in Oregon City. Participants are then invited to regroup at the nearby Mountain View Cemetery, where they will identify and pay respect to the graves of Clackamas County individuals who served in , and survived, the Civil War.

THE MOTIVATION
Krone has a history professor friend who always greets him with the same question: “Well, Frank, what have you dug up lately?” The joke refers to both his love for hands-on grave restoration, and to the resurrection of the life-stories of the long-departed revealed by Frank and K.C.’s work.

Frank reads three to four newspapers a day. His Civil War research began in earnest, he says, the morning he read an article by an (undisclosed) Portland journalist, who commented that Oregon’s only connection to the Civil War is its football rivalry.

“We took offense to that,” said Krone, co-founder of Northwest Historical Perspectives, and - like his partner K.C. Piccard-Krone - an Oregon Lincoln Bicentennial Commissioner. “We knew there over ten, maybe twenty- thousand Civil War veterans or more who settled here.”

THE SOLDIERS
Those soldiers experienced a second life in Oregon. “Unlike most people in the mid-19th century, who had never traveled more than a dozen miles from home, they were accustomed to culture shock,” Krone surmises of veterans who emigrated west. They were used to traveling on limited means in the long war years. “When the army could no longer pay them, many came over the Oregon Trail with the hope of free land.”

“Most fought for the Union, and settled in the Willamette Valley. Approximately a quarter, generally those aligned with the Confederacy, made their way to Southern Oregon,” states Frank. “But interestingly, at Lone Fir, there are two soldiers buried not far apart, who fought on opposite sides - for the 18th Kansas and North Carolina Units - in the same battle, at Appomattox!”

Forced to work around the catastrophic loss of Oregon’s 1890 Census records consumed by fire, K.C. and Frank delve deep into as many primary sources as they can, like the 50-60 volumes of daily war reports filed by Union officers, found at the Multnomah Co. Library, where we met for this interview.

A PULL TOWARDS HISTORIC RESEARCH
Frank Krone’s interest in history began the day his Nebraskan father took him on a road trip to Montana to see the battlefields of Little Big Horn. The 11 year old had an overwhelming experience of connection to the place and its rolling hills, waving with a thick coat of buffalo grass. Like many who visit Civil War Era sites, bloodsoaked - and as Lincoln noted, forever consecrated - young Frank connected to something in the previous century that has not lost hold. “I immediately had to find out who Custer was, what happened to him - and why. “

The same curiosity abounds in the vivacious K.C. Piccard-Krone, a writer, who recently embarked with Frank on a multi-year quest to uncover the story of Sarah, a fugitive slave from Prince County, Maryland, who sought freedom in the Oregon Territory in 1842, decades before it came to those in the South, and in defiance of Oregon’s early exclusionary laws. K.C. Piccard-Krone is Executive President at Friends of History at Portland State University, and Co-Chair of the Civil War Round Table.

No one could have guessed that the spark between the Krones originated in the credit department of Meier & Frank Department Store, where they both worked as clerks. On their first date in 1978, Krone was intrigued when K.C. admitted her love for the Boeing B-17. He took her to a Shakespeare play, she took him to a German opera, and their courtship revealed a common need for “backstory”, which after 35 years, has not diminished.

THE FUTURE OF HISTORIC CEMETARIES
Frank works for the health and vitality of cemeteries. From biodegradable coffins to internment without chemical environmental pollutants, he wants people to know they have natural burial alternatives. The couple gives tours of Lone Fir Cemetery every Memorial Day.

Frank has restored historic headstones for Metro cemeteries, some broken in two, and a few completely sunken into the earth. “Pioneer cemeteries are in danger. They need protection, research, and restoration.”

Another way Krone aims to protect pioneer cemeteries is to preserve and present information about the lives of those resting there. “A headstone is the last physical evidence of a life,” he says. In the case of a Civil War Veteran, a military marker in the form of a shield, shipped out by the government from a stone quarry in Vermont, may have been his final honor.

AMERICA IS ITS STORIES
“Everyone has a story, Frank explains. History is just a collection of stories. Those stories are what make up America. When we lose the story of any one life, we lose part of our identity. “

MUSEUM INFO
This free program is presented by the Clackamas County Historical Society, and includes complimentary admission to the Museum of the Oregon Territory (MOOT), thanks to sponsorship from EyeHealth Northwest.